Even Angels Fall Down
by brideofdankenstein
Summary: After a while, I couldn't remember whole pieces of you, as if part of the punishment was a recollection through a filter that grew hazier with time. It's like I've just put together one of those billion hour long puzzles, only to stomp on it again. JOMMY.


DISCLAIMER: Much to my dismay, I don't own Instant Star

**DISCLAIMER:** Much to my dismay, I don't own Instant Star.

**AN: **I'd like to dedicate this songfic/oneshot/whatever it is to HopelessRomantic984. She used the song I'm using – "Comatose" by Skillet – in her AMAZING fanfic _Without You_. You should DEFINITELY check it out. Well… that's about it, I think. As usual, enjoy and R&R! Peace.

--

There is something so unique about heartache – I never could figure it out, personally. I suppose it's the way it hits you so unexpectedly… a tidal wave knocking you down, a band-aid being ripped away. After a while, I couldn't remember whole pieces of you, as if part of the punishment was a recollection through a filter that grew hazier with time. Sometimes I dream of us together again, but only for a few moments. It's like I've just put together one of those billion hour long puzzles, only to stomp on it again. Instead of all of you, I have bits and pieces. I cannot picture what your teeth looked like, or the exact curve of your jaw where it fit in my hand.

_I hate feeling like this  
I'm so tired of trying to fight this  
I'm asleep and all I dream of is waking to you  
Tell me that you will listen  
Your touch is what I'm missing  
And the more I hide I realize I'm slowly losing you_

I used to imagine us meeting up for a drink at a bright little restaurant, maybe one of those coffee shops that have become so popular. I swear I could smell the blended beans and see vividly the white of the napkins. I could almost taste your skin - as funny as it is, that's the one thing that has stuck with me all this time. I was able to see your easy smile, which always seemed to startle its way across your face. I didn't give us any conversatin: no "You look great," no "What have you been up to?" no "It has been hell." Like your teeth and the line of your jaw, this part was unclear to me. I wasn't sure - I'm still not - if there was a protocol to follow when I welcomed back from hiding my other half.

_Comatose  
I'll never wake up without an overdose of you_

There should be a statue of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is alright to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after forty two days, you will no longer turn, heart racing, certain you have heard him call out your name. There will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out his desk, take down his books from the shelf, turn over a portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it.

_I don't wanna live  
I don't wanna breathe  
Unless I feel you next to me  
You take the pain I feel  
Waking up to you never felt so real  
I don't wanna sleep  
I don't wanna dream  
'cause my dreams don't comfort me  
The way you make me feel  
Waking up to you never felt so real_

As stupid and school girl-ish as it sounds, it was one of the things I loved best about you physically. The curve of your shoulder where my head laid so many times, and how you smelled like baby powder. I still have moments where I could swear that I just smelled you in a crowd - and then my best friend looks at me with a pitying look, and I scratch out another possibility in my heart, a strangled game of tic-tac-toe. Grief is a curious thing when it happens unexpectedly. It's a band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded.

_I hate living without you  
Dead wrong to ever doubt you  
But my demons lay in waiting  
Tempting me away  
Oh how I adore you  
Oh how I thirst for you  
Oh how I need you_

Did you know that I have a picture of you? It's not one I took; it somehow made its way into my possession weeks and weeks later. You're slightly off to the side, like the photographer meant to be photographing something else. You're sitting under a tree, and I can see the side of your discman peeking out from your sweatshirt - a sliver of a moon. You're slightly blurry in the photo, but I like it all the same. You've got this ittle knowing smile on your face, like you realized you were going to be in someone else's photo, and you didn't give a damn. That smile - that's what gets me about the picture. It covers so many different things that I think of when I think of you. It shows that you're happy, that you're concentrating, that you're curious. I guess mostly it shows someone I loved. I remember so much and yet so little about you.

_Comatose  
I'll never wake up without an overdose of you_

I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply that they'd always be a part of you. There's an image that goes with that phrase: something fluid and warm that starts at your heart and spreads all the way out to your fingertips and toes, carried by the blood.

This girl on the bus, she said she couldn't stop dreaming about that guy. She said that she wouldn't be the person she was now if she hadn't met him.

Under her skin, she said.  
And I started thinking.

_I don't wanna live  
I don't wanna breathe  
Unless I feel you next to me  
You take the pain I feel  
Waking up to you never felt so real  
I don't wanna sleep  
I don't wanna dream  
'cause my dreams don't comfort me  
The way you make me feel  
Waking up to you never felt so real_

I think you sent me a postcard once. It was just a postcard, addressed to me in unidentifiable block lettering, with nothing at all written on the message side. On the front was a picture of a pig and a heifer dressed in fancy hats and polka-dot dresses. I'M SWINE, the headline said. COW ARE YOU? It was exactly the kind of thing you'd never in a million years pick off a postcard rack, and so that's why I thought it was from you; another layer to hide behind. It's not true, just so you know, what they say about writing being the next best thing to being there. For days I stared at that postcard, and touched in all the places I imagined you had, when you wrote the address and affixed the stamp and what have you, but never once did I feel like I found you again.

_Breathing life  
Waking up  
My eyes  
Open up_

Your hair was wild around your face, and your thumbs were pressed up close against each other in front of your lips where they held the top of the acorn. "Like this," you said, but you were laughing too hard; you couldn't show me how you made those little wedges with your thumbs on the wooden cap and blew through your knuckles to make an unholy whistle. I was hopelessly bad at whistling through an acorn tp; you kept at it for hours, holding your hands over mine and telling me to get another damn acorn when the first cap shattered under the pressure of my clumsy thumb. Do you know how you love people more on certain days? It wasn't the way your hair looked when the sun was shining streaks across it, or the feeling of your hands locked around mine, willing them to move a certain way.

It was because on that day, at least, you didn't give up.

_Comatose  
I'll never wake up without an overdose of you_

Don't laugh: What I miss most is talking to you. I imagine running into you in a crowded market - even though I don't know of any markets near Maryland. And we decide to have lunch - but it isn't because you wanted, and it isn't because I forced you. It is because after all that time, it feels like there is a guideline to follow. We talk over margaritas - obviously we're both older in these imaginings, and quite far away from this shitty little town - and then we walk back to where you're staying and we talk some more, and we talk in the hotel lobby and we keep talking until the moon is high in the sky and the bellhops change shifts and the night manager kicks us out.

I want to talk to you, but I don't have the slightest idea what we would have to say.

**AN: **Ta-da, the end. Like I said earlier, R&R.


End file.
